What with real life biting my ass, I've been more of a passive participant (rather than actively doing anything) in fandom these days. This means that I'm mostly rooting around and reading fanfiction for some of the smaller fandoms I vaguely follow just to get my mind off things.

Delving back into the fever swamp that is fandom, however, means that I am being reminded of the downside of fandom, like how certain fan behaviors can turn me against not only a fictional character, but also a 'ship.

For example — in one fandom, I keep coming across a certain 'ship faction that keeps doing things like:

1. Advertising that a fanwork is about a given 'ship, and then using the opportunity to actually bash that ship in the fanwork. The good news? It's the male half of the pair getting bashed, at least.
2. Inserting their "stealth 'ship" as a secondary ship in fanworks that advertise a completely unrelated 'ship. Best of all? There is no indication that said stealth ship is going to  make an appearance or that it's even a secondary 'ship.

And it seems to be endemic in this one 'ship faction, to the point where I'm starting to assume the worst.

What doesn't help is that even before delving in this one fandom, I found the 'ship to be vaguely creepy to begin with, but I was willing to give it a shot. (Hint:  It's not the 'ship where the characters have a 13-year age difference.)

Now? I absolutely can't stand said 'ship and am going out of my way to avoid any and every fanwork where there's even a threat of it showing up.

This bitching brought to you by yet another fic advertising one pair (a rare-ish pair I actually like), only to find out that the fic is an excuse to explore the author's real favorite pairing.

Damn it! It's annoying! It isn't like the writing for this story was all that great, but I there's such a dearth of fics out there for this pair that I was willing to hang in there.

Ugh. Here I was hoping for a long-ass honeymoon period. So much for that idea.

I know, I know. Not really a problem. Nothing more than a damn annoyance, really. But still.

When are people going to learn that this kind of crap does not convince anyone, and in fact annoys the crap out of most.